This is how fascism comes

Tim Wise has written a thoughtful and enlightening article in the Red Room that challenges Americans to either take an active stand against the encroaching fascism in our country or reap the rewards of silence.


"For those who have seen the ugliness and heard the vitriol emanating from the mouths of persons attending McCain/Palin rallies this past week–what with their demands to kill Barack Obama, slurs that he is a terrorist and a traitor, and paranoid delusions about his crypto-Muslim designs on America–please know this: This is how fascism comes to an ostensible democracy.

If it comes–and if those whose poisonous, unhinged verbiage has been so ubiquitous this week have any say over it, it surely will–this is how it will happen: not with tanks and jackbooted storm troopers, but carried in the hearts of men and women dressed in comfortable shoes, with baseball caps, and What Would Jesus Do? wristbands. It will be heralded by up-dos, designer glasses, you-betcha folksiness and a disdain for big words or hard consonants.

If fascism comes, it will spring from the soil of middle America, from people known as values voters but whose values are toxic, from simple folk whose simplicity, far from being admirable, is better labeled ignorance, from “all-American” types whose patriotism is a dagger pointed at the very heart of the national interest, for it so forsakes all the best principles upon which the republic was founded, choosing instead to elevate and ratify the narrow-mindedness, the bigotry, and the intolerance that also marked our country’s origins.

If fascism comes it will be welcomed, lock stock and barrel by persons who pray at every meal to a God they visualize as white, whose son they also think was white, and who they believe is going to rapture them all into the sky upon the blowing of some heavenly trumpet, after which point all those who don’t think as they think will be burned in an eternal lake of fire. Their vision and version of God is itself fascistic–to love a God who would do such a thing is to love an abusive, sadistic and evil deity after all–so it should come as little surprise that their conception of the state would be equally authoritarian or worse.

And if fascism doesn’t come–if, rather, democracy does–it will come because good people said no. It will come because we saw in this moment the opportunity to demand the full measure of our humanity and to pour it forth upon the national soil. It will be because we understood that democracy isn’t what you have, it’s what you do. But if we are to issue that demand, if we are to stand straight and fulfill the potential we possess to do justice, we had best exercise the option quickly, for the opponents of justice are on the move. They are preparing to enter on the winds of our silence and indifference, and complacency. Let them find no quarter here."


Please be sure to read the full article here.

Tim raises points that should be important to any person who truly values our American ideals. He espouses beliefs at the core of humanism and non-belief.

Politics and religion have become the great social dividers. They create a climate of them vs. us, a belief that one group is right and everyone else is wrong. They belittle and push to the margins anyone who advocates cooperation, equality and peace. They attempt to silence those who oppose them.

Those of us who support humanistic goals, who champion equality and fairness, who oppose division, hate and prejudice must make our voices heard. We cannot remain silent and hope for the best. Simply voting for a change and expecting the government to reclaim its Constitutional heritage isn’t going to be enough.

We have to actively oppose racism, bigotry and ignorance whenever we encounter it. We must speak out, silence is not an option.